The Pueblo of Sandia Petroglyph Project

by: Estella Tsethlikai and Domingo Otero

During July and August 1995 a group of six students from Sandia Pueblo
worked on a project recording petroglyphs at Petroglyph National Monument, in Albuquerque, New
Mexico.
The students in the group were Loren Gutierrez, Brandi Torivio, Rebecca
Trujillo, Scott Paisano, Estella Tsethlikai and Domingo Otero.
The project
goal was to record all the rock art at Piedras Las Mercadas which is one of the
many sites at Petroglyph Monument.
The Monument is on the fast-growing west side of Albuquerque and
is encroached upon and threatened by nearby housing developments.
Our goal is also to record all petroglyphs systematically and
thoroughly for inclusion in a computer database.

The project is sponsored by The Chamisa Foundation of Santa Fe and the Pueblo
of Sandia. The project coordinators are Henry Walt and John Brayer.

Work began with an orientation which was held at the Sandia Pueblo Wellness
Center on July 17. In the orientation the sudent crew learned how to use
surveying equipment and how to survey. The crew also learned how to photograph
rock art and how to fill out the field recording forms. There were four
different forms that had to be filled out for each Pertoglyph.

The next step was to go out to the field and begin the hard work. The
first thing that they had to do was break up the site into different working
units. Then the crew broke up into two groups of three, and started recording.
One person took photographs, and the other two filled out forms.

The group worked Mondays through Fridays from 6:00 am to 12:00 noon. On
Wednesdays the group took field trips. The first field trip was to the
University of New Mexico. They visited the campus and had people talk to them
about all the programs available to Native American students. The second field
trip was to a rock art site at La Cienega, near Santa Fe. The next field trip
was taken to law offices in downtown Albuquerque. The group was able to talk to
a number of lawyers. From there, they went to the Maxwell Museum of
Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. On their last field trip, the
crew went to Abo ruins near Mountainair, New Mexico.

The field work is over and now we have begun to compile the data and enter it
into a computer database. Photographs will be incorporated into the database
and saved for further references. The project will continue on until after the
first of the year. Hopefully there will be funding available to continue the
project in further years to come.

Up top are pictures of the area worked on and samples of the work. There are
also pictures of the group.
At left is an image of a flute player.
Below is a contour map of the study region.